MULTIMODALITY

Multimodality is a term which is aroused wide concern by

linguists and semioticians in recent years in western
countries.

Van Leeuwen (2005, p.281) holds that Multimodality means

the combination of different semiotic modes—for example,
language and music—in a communicative artifact or event.

Other important representatives, Baldry and Thibault

(2006, p.21), added that Multimodality refers to the diverse
ways in which a number of distinct semiotic resource
systems are both co-deployed and co-contextualized in the
making of a text-specific meaning.
 From the definitions we can see that multimodality
is:

• the study of interrelationships and interdependence between

different communicative modes, no matter whether they are
written or oral, visual or auditory.
• a way to transcribe the meaning of discourses composed of
different semiotic modes.
• does not designate a pre-given entity or text-type. Rather, it
is a diversity of meaning making activities that are
undergoing rapid change in the current cultural
surroundings.
• the concept of multimodality is a useful yardstick for
measuring and assessing the diversity of ways of meaning
making.
 MULTILITERACIES
Cope and Kalantzis (2000, p.5-9) have made a detailed explanation
about them.
• Traditionally literacy pedagogy has meant teaching and learning to
read and write in page-bound, official, standard forms of the
national language, or in other words, formalized, mono-lingual,
mono-cultural, and rule-governed forms of language.
• But now literacy teaching and learning include a great variety of
discourses due to the rapidly social, economic, communicational
and technological changes in the contemporary cultural context.
• So the current literacy has to explain the increasing variety of text
forms associated with information and multimedia technologies
such as visual images and their relationship to the written word.
• Under such circumstances the word “multiliteracies” was agreed
upon. It was proposed by the New London Group in a conference
for discussion about the future of literacy teaching and learning in
1994.
The New London Group, a group of linguists including Norman
Fairclough, James Gee, Gunther Kress, etc., says the word
“multiliteracies” describes two important dimensions:

1. the great variety of communication channels and media

meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal, such
as, on the web pages, script modes of meaning are combined
with audio, video, and spatial modes to make meaning. When
new technologies are developing so quickly, we need to think
about the new ways of meaning making. But to find out ways of
meaning making requires a new multimodal literacy.

2. The increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity.

it means with the globalization and wide impact in cross-cultural
communication, English is breaking into multiple and
increasingly differentiated English marked by accent, national
origin, and sub-cultural style and so on, for example, Australian
English, New Zealand English, Indian English or even Chinese
English.